Net Play

"Net Play" is my creation for "Games". After spending most of our two month creation time making numerous sketches along the theme of games I settled on my favorite game and sketch. I wanted to try a new technique, new to me, so I used Terri Stegmiller's mosaic technique for my background. (You can see one of Terri's pieces that inspired me over at my blog.)

 I did some measuring and transferred the marks to my background for net placement.

With the background completed it was time to see if those sketches transferred well to fabric. I tried some of my original placements for the balls and spent a LOT of time trying to come up with the right fabrics for the balls, even considered using some wallpaper samples as the colors were right.

After days of playing with fabrics, paper, placements and photos of each one, my husband asked what it was I wanted to convey with this piece. I wanted the viewer to enjoy the visual design of the piece and if they considered the title and the elements of the piece they would see it was about tennis. He suggested I include some court lines but literal placement only added busyness so I decided to use another technique I had been wanting to use. I used three layers of tulle to create a translucent court outline and put it in the area that needed another element of design.

I was happy with the added court but the balls weren't working well. I wanted to create depth and a single path. My two sets of balls created confusion for me. Finally when looking at the photos I'd taken of numerous option, the winner jumped out at me. I had thought I would add quilting or stitching lines to represent the tennis balls but decided against that as I like the idea of balls or bubbles as well as tennis balls moving across the piece. I didn't want literal.

Thanks team for a fun and enjoyable two months with our first challenge. I'm looking forward to our next!